Visually communicating the complex world of global energy requires an acute attention to detail and a focused level of domain expertise that is only cultivated through years of experience. These examples highlight ways in which our team distills disparate sources of energy data and statistics into rich, yet simple, plots and figures

In this unique form for plotting the difference between California’s oil production and gasoline consumption surplus turned deficit, we’ve chosen to create a multi-plot data display that highlights the two original data sources from the State of California and the EIA and the final overlay.

In the main plot on the left, see the two-color area chart that changes colors from black to red based on whether the BTU balance sheet is in surplus or deficit. The top x-axis shows the differential between production and consumption at each highlighted year. The data series is formatted to normalize the units in BTUs.

With this bar chart, we are overlaying two data series from the 2014 BP Statistical Review on growth rates in electricity production vs. global crude oil production growth.

Several features highlight our design choices: (1) by overlaying the plot’s grid on top of the bars for each year’s data, these columns appear that these are blocks laid on top of each other (rather than displaying the grid underneath the bars as in many conventional plots) (2) a tables present at the top of the chart to show the values for each year (3) rather than showingcolumns in parallel to each other, we stack the columns on top of each other to highlight the years where electricity generation growth is higher than oil production growth.

ANNUAL ELECTRICITY GENERATED: OECD VS. NON-OECD

Release Date: June 2014 Client: June 2014 Issue of Terrajoule.us

This plot draws on source data from the 2014 BP Statistical Review to display trends of OECD electricity generation from 2003 to 2013. Several notable features of this plot are indicative of how we like to plot macro-trends.

Because figures like this are useful for making quick comparisons, in this case between the OECD and the non-OECD, we highlight the delta between each in two different ways: (1) by shading the difference and (2) by adding a top x-axis that provides the value for [non-OECD] - [OECD] in each year

CALIFORNIA MONTHLY NEW SOLAR APPLICATIONS AND CAPACITY: 2007 THROUGH 2014Release Date: February 2014

By using two y-axes, we show the cumulative amount of PV capacity added from 2007 through 2014 in California on the top, while below we show you the individual monthly additions that contributed to the accumulation of solar capacity. This allows a quick insight into which months were outliers in the growth of PV.

ZOOMTo show the contribution of average barrel production per well in North Dakota’s Bakken shale play to the cumulative production, we use two colours and two lines. On the right, a slightly offset y-axis label at each 50 barrels per day (bpd). The x-axis breaks each year into quarters.

This plot of California’s annual taxable gasoline sales uses several aesthetic features to announce this trend in liquid fuel use. A slight transparency in this area fill chart allows the grid to show through while the flowing line uses spline smoothing to appear as a fluid.